Payroll tax cut OK’d by Senate

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The Senate voted Saturday to temporarily avert a Jan. 1 payroll tax increase and benefit cutoff for the long-time unemployed, and forced a reluctant President Barack Obama to make an election-year choice between unions and environmentalists over whether to build an oil pipeline through the heart of the country.

The action set up a House vote Monday on the legislation.

With the still-reeling economy serving as a backdrop, the Senate’s 89-10 vote belied a tortuous battle between Democrats and Republicans that produced the compromise two-month extension of the expiring tax breaks and jobless benefits and forestalled cuts in doctors’ Medicare reimbursements.

It also capped a year of divided government marked by raucous partisan fights that tumbled to the brink of a first U.S. default and three federal shutdowns, only to see eleventh-hour deals emerge. It also put the two sides on track to revisit the payroll tax cut early next year as the fights for control of the White House and Congress heat up.

However, House GOP leaders had a conference call Saturday with rank-and-file lawmakers in which participants said strong anger was expressed about the Senate bill, including its lack of House-approved cuts in last year’s health-care overhaul law and its failure to erase the reductions in doctors’ payments for more than two months.

“You can’t have an economic recovery with this,” Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., said of the bill. “If the Senate is incapable of doing that, we don’t have to accept it.”

A House GOP aide said afterward, “Members are overwhelmingly disappointed in the Senate’s decision to just ‘kick the can down the road’ for two months. No announcement was made regarding the schedule or plans.”